Trouble
by xxxevilgrinxxx
Summary: After the events of Pitch Black, Riddick leaves Jack on New Mecca and sets out to try to put as much distance between them as possible. It doesn't quite work out that way.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Trouble

**Author:** xxxevilgrinxxx

**Date:** September 2009

**Rating:** M – violence

**Disclaimer:** Riddick doesn't belong to me, neither does Jack. Granger is a product of my imagination and has appeared once before in the short story, "Granger's Run." Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental. In addition, the song "Trouble" is written by Yusef Islam (Cat Stevens).

**Archive: **FDB/FF**  
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**Feedback:** Please leave constructive feedback. Flames will be removed if they are deemed excessive.

**Author's Notes:** Granger has appeared in the short story "Granger's Run". For the sake of this story, I have played with the timeline.

**Dedication: **For NJRD

_**Trouble**_

_I have seen your eyes_

_And I can see death's disguise_

_Hanging on me_

_Hanging on me_

_I am beat, I'm torn_

_Shattered and tossed and worn_

_Too shocking to see_

_Too shocking to see_

_Trouble_

_Oh trouble move from me_

_I have paid my debt_

_Now won't you leave me in my misery_

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Much was made of survival, of the ability to overcome, to get up and keep going in the face of adversity. As Riddick chittered against a cold only he could feel, the earthenware cup of unidentifiable tea held tightly in his hands, he knew the truth.

Survival had less to do with any strength of purpose or of character. Survival meant the sheer will to do what others thought unimaginable. To do the unthinkable and walk away afterward. To not look back.

Even though he had managed to escape this time, he wasn't so sure that he had walked away clean and he knew that he had looked back.

There were few things that he regretted. Life was far too short, too brutal, to regret any moment where he could draw breath, but those few small things that he did regret could crush him beneath their weight. That most people would never know that he felt that way changed little. He could afford moments of introspection when he was free, but he knew that to show what mattered would lead to more people getting hurt.

"You're not real."

In the tightly packed shack that passed for a local bar on the frontier mining colony, vicious looking men went out of their way to give him space. The bar stools on either side were empty. Other than the bartenders that slung swill from dirty bottles into dirtier glasses, there was no one in front of Riddick that he could be talking to.

It didn't matter. On some level Riddick knew that the slender girl that stood before him wasn't real. Not real in the way those around him were real.

Elfin, the young girl flickered and vanished, only to reappear as the two dirty bartenders walked in her space. Sometimes as neat and clean as the day he had left her on New Mecca, in the care of the Holy Man. More often she was grimy, sweaty and afraid, her battered goggles on her newly shorn head.

Jack.

She was real enough that he swore he could smell her. The slightly sweet smell that only came from children. Something else beneath. In any case, she never spoke and he wasn't sure if that was a blessing or not. He would have called her a ghost if not for his deep-buried need for her to be alive, somewhere, anywhere.

Real or not, she remained. Which brought him back to survival and all the things that he had done to survive.

After New Mecca he had set a path into the wilds, working to put as much space between him and Jack as he could. Another ghost lane, another grimy cargo freighter. Stowed away in the bowels of the ship, he had very nearly made it.

It had been a gamble. He knew it but he had been tired, bone tired, and the cargo ship he had stowed away on had seemed a quieter option but instead of a remote mining or agricultural planet, the cargo ship had made an unscheduled detour to drop a delivery at a far flung prison.

As far as prisons went, it hadn't been much. Butcher Bay, Ursa Luna, Dark Athena, all those and countless others, Riddick had under his belt. Done time. Escaped. Added to his impressive resume. What Decarra 12 had going for it was its sheer isolation. He had wanted to be as far from New Mecca, from Jack, as he could get and that he had finally accomplished.

And still he couldn't escape Jack. The girl had followed him out into the wilderness, whether he had wanted her to or not.

With the amount of practice he'd amassed, getting out of the cell had been fairly easy. It was getting out of the prison, and to where, that was the larger issue. He took it one step at a time.

In every other prison he had been in, Riddick had been able to rely on the convict's grapevine to learn something about the layout, the guards, the warden. In Decarra 12 he was flying blind. Not that he intended to let that stop him. If there was a way in, there would be a way out. It just came down to what he was willing to do to survive. That's what it always came down to.

In the dark outside of his cell, he had crept along the walls, keeping to the deepest shadows, before he slipped down through a drain opening into the sewer below. It was a twelve foot drop with no hope of a graceful, or dry, landing.

The sudden splash had aroused the desultory interest of a guard who stood on the lip of the now closed drain cover and shone a light through the grate. After sweeping the hole, he moved on. Only when all traces of light left did Riddick rise out of the muck, spluttering into his palm so the noise wouldn't attract any more attention. With any luck, the guard would think the noise he heard was a rat, or what always seemed to pass for rats in every prison he had ever been in. Even then, he stood stock still in the drain opening, timing the footfalls of the guards on watch. Choosing the right time to move out.

The dark had been no obstacle but his eyeshine did nothing to help him find a direction when he had none and he had to double back several times as he made his way through the fetid sludge in the tunnels below the prison.

No sound, no light. Growing nausea. Disorientation. He had quickly lost track of the passing of time. In the total black of the sewer he had settled on one of the oldest, most reliable methods. He would stop, retch, and mark the wall. If he managed to circle back to the mark he had made, he would cross one mark with the other. Try to sit and find what rest he could before moving forward, ever forward.

That he was lost was a foregone conclusion yet he persevered, clenching his teeth against the bile that rose in his throat. Move forward. There would be a way out if only he kept moving.

When he grew too tired to move, that's when Jack had first showed up. She had stood in front of him, silent as he ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. Not so disoriented that he didn't know that Jack was in fact on New Mecca, not some hellhole at the end of the galaxy.

Knowing that didn't change the power the young girl held over him. As he retched pathetically into the fetid water, he had clung to her image. To the remembered sound of her voice. He clung to her like life itself.

When he was shat out on the other side of Decarra 12's walls, he knew that it was partly because of Jack that he had survived. That without her, he may have wandered in the tunnels, lost, paying penance for having originally left her back in the cave on T2.

As he gulped in the only slighter cleaner air in the broken culvert outside the walls, he also knew that he was sick.

_© copyright September 2009 xxxevilgrinxxx_


	2. Chapter 2

**Linwe-Ancalime:** Thanks and welcome!

**BatPhace:** It's always great to see you, Batty! Updates? Every Thursday! (crosses fingers!)

**Dreaming Dragonfly:** I like Jack as ghost-girl too. Or maybe it's just the idea of haunting Riddick that has me.

**Furyan Goddess:** Yes, crossing paths on T2 changed the paths of both their lives and I love having Riddick so affected by it. Thanks!

**blissdementia:** Riddick being sick is unsettling, isn't it? Like being sick is for other people. I like him being off his game, having to do things differently, not because he wants to but because he has to. It evens up the odds a bit.

**TashaTaz:** thanks, Tash! I'll make a point to try to keep the updates regular (I'm thinking on Thursdays sounds good to me.)

**Saismaat:** Fun works for me!

"Heavy passivity" is a good way to describe it and it gets to how I feel about Riddick in the beginning of this. It was definitely deliberate, to be weaker and un-Riddicklike.

I had a hard time qualifying "survival". I read it several times and I couldn't get Riddick to say it for me. To me, I saw him viewing Survival as a thing in itself, as a big concept, something solid, and I couldn't add anything onto it. Maybe I read it again later and it comes out, but for now I'll have to leave it rest.

I did hone down "clean" and "looking back" and "submerged". It was a sentence that I struggled with so I was quite glad to have that pointed out as it made me smash it up a little, thanks!

I clarified "cargo ship", as no, it definitely wasn't his intention to go to prison. It was an unintented stop and just his piss poor luck to have to stop there.

The situation with Jack is definitely sad. Clinging so hard to someone he just met like that? Yeah, poor bastard. And of course having her as his guiding light is too good not to use! Thanks for joining in!

**njrd:** I share so many of these ideas with you, batting them around, before they ever see the light of day, and it's JACK! that of course I have to dedicate it to you. Full circle indeed, with Riddick and everything! ((huge smooches!))

**An additional thank you** goes to all of you that have favorited the story, or me! I'm flattered and reassured that this was the right move! Thanks so much!

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**Chapter 2**

For days after he had escaped Decarra 12, he had stumbled through sweltering marshland, his only direction taken from brief glimpses of a ghost-girl through the swollen boles of trees. A girl that by all rights should have been glad to see him dead; he had left her in a cave, if only briefly. And then left her again, on New Mecca.

In the weak light of day he hid, curled against a rotten log or against the side of a bank. When it was quiet he could hear the sounds of pursuit, after a time, but they never got close. Still he felt driven even as whatever illness had claimed him in the sewer had him in its grip. He shivered despite the stagnant heat.

At first when he had spotted the dilapidated space port where he had first touched down and been hauled away to the prison in shackles, he had thought it was another fevered vision but when Jack stepped out onto the hard cracked ground, he had followed. If he'd had the will to laugh he would have. One vision that he knew wasn't real proving the existence of a place he wasn't all that sure existed.

Jack hadn't led him astray. He had no idea why she was there, why she stayed even as he left the darkness of the prison, but she hadn't led him wrong and so he had followed her ethereal shape across the blasted rock surface.

Waiting for trucks and dock hands to pass, he had snuck past the more heavily armed and guarded star jumpers and made for the heavy freighters. His luck had held in spite of all odds and he had boarded without being seen. He didn't trust that it would hold for the whole trip, freighters had been bad luck to him lately, but he was exhausted, strung out, and almost beyond caring.

Sick. Wracked with fevered visions and the shakes, he had found a dark place to hide in an unkempt engine hidey-hole. Sharpened a piece of steel into a blade and slept fitfully as the freighter rose from the baked stone of Decarra.

All that time, Jack hadn't left him and Riddick was at a loss to explain why. He simply didn't understand why she would stay. Or why he would need her so badly that he would create her when he needed her most. In any case, she never opened her mouth to explain but her presence spoke volumes.

While the fever raged within him, he dreamt of her and spoke to her. Only in his dreams did she answer. When it got bad it was enough to whisper the young girl's name for his fear to subside, at least a little.

When the freighter had set down on another bustling frontier world and he had slipped off with the other space-struck passengers, the worst of the sickness had passed. He still felt weak, broken. And Jack was still there.

Illness had been traded for a wilting depression that he hated but was unable to lift.

He missed her and that was something that had never happened to him before that he could remember. Life was hard and didn't suffer fools. Riddick had left behind more people than he could remember, more than he wanted to remember. Too slow, too weak, too stupid. Too expendable.

All of that he knew and still the guilt would hit him when he thought about T2. About the young girl he had come to admire, to even like. When he had left her in a cave, knowing it would mean her death. Going back for her gave him a sword against the guilt but it couldn't set it aside completely. Because he knew that he had left her there to die. So he could move on and survive, and now she had come back for him, hadn't left him when he needed her.

He missed her and, as another wrack of shivering had him grit his teeth and grip the tea cup in both hands, he knew that it wasn't just whatever bug he had picked up in the escape that was making him sick. He was heartsick and all he wanted to do was try to hop the next freighter back to New Mecca.

But first he'd have to lose the tail he had picked up.

Finishing his tea, Riddick left a few pilfered coins under the upturned cup, signaling to one of the bartenders and getting to his feet. It was hard to hide the shakes but he hid the weakness as best he could as he left the bar, pulling the hood of his rough robe up over his head, hiding his features, blending into the crowd.

With purpose he strode through the streets and back alleys as weak daylight broke, doubling back and circling to lose any tail he might have picked up. In his condition he couldn't afford to be caught in the small safe place he had made and if that meant spending longer than he liked in the cold, risking the rain, he would do it.

Day broke cold, the acrid, burnt electric scent of impending rain making him move faster, slipping through the doors of the hotel just as the first fat drops fell and sizzled quietly on the ground. Up the two flights to his room, checking sight lines all the way and then he was inside, the door barricaded and the window an emergency exit if he needed it.

The damp cloak got draped over the radiator and then he snatched the threadbare blanket off the single bed. With no one to see, the shakes settled in with a vengeance and he reached beneath the bed for what little medication he had managed to pilfer from the freighter. There hadn't been much, little more than a first aid kit, but he had taken it, until he could get something better and find out what was wrong, what he had. Teeth chattering, he dry swallowed two and willed the trembling to stop, hating the weakness he felt.

Nothing moved in the day, not if they could help it. The acidic rain, a byproduct of the planet's mining operations, fell in a foul yellow drizzle would make sure of that. Whoever was on his trail would also have to wait for nightfall, when the winds changed and the rain moved back out across the desert moonscape of the planet. There would be a scant few hours to get sleep, to get strong, and then the pursuit would begin in earnest.

Listening to the rain outside, Riddick thought back to when he had first spotted the tail. A shape caught once too often in a busy street. Whoever it was was good, knew how to use the crowds, to work in and disappear into the background. Riddick wasn't so proud that he couldn't see the skill in that. Knew that it was likely his tail had spotted him more than just twice.

_'Merc.'_

Legit law would have come at him right out in the open, badges and guns out, or would have kicked down the door to his room, if they were coming at all. Another convict would have come at him sideways, would have found a way to leave a message for him rather than approach him in the open. So that left mercs.

Not just any merc. Whoever it was, he was good, someone Riddick had never come across before. Eyes closed, he conjured the shape of the man he had seen over the past couple of days.

Nothing had stood out about him; he had blended in with the crowd, disappearing and reappearing amongst the miners and hard men, and if Riddick hadn't a honed sense for mercs, he never would have made him at all.

A little shorter than Riddick, a little lighter, the man was compact, with a fighter's build. He had moved fast, fluid, with grace. Dark eyes and dark hair beneath a cloak like those worn by everyone else. It went without saying that he would be armed; being without a weapon would have stood out and marked the man as a target. He never would have made it into the town at all; someone else would have targetted him already and he wouldn't be Riddick's problem anymore. Yet the merc hadn't made a display of his weapons, which wasn't like a merc at all. Most wore their weaponry right out in the open, looking for a fight, with something to prove. And he had stayed back and watched, instead of coming on the moment his payday was spotted, which separated him from other mercs and made him something more dangerous.

There weren't all that many places to jump to after Decarra 12, no matter the mode of transport and any decent merc hunting him probably would have stopped on the frontier planet to look for him. Riddick went on the assumption that the merc had made him shortly after planetfall. That meant three days. Made in three days. Impressive.

In other circumstances, Riddick would have jumped port already, shook the tail, but he was in a dangerous unfamiliar system. It was no place for a sick man; he had looked to go to ground. Now the merc would have to go before Riddick could move on.

The bed creaked beneath him as his weight settled and Riddick thought more about the man that followed him. The population of the frontier town was transient. The merc could be holed up anywhere, as empty rooms were common and no one stayed very long. With a weak smile, Riddick thought that the merc could even be staying in the very same rooming house. It was doubtful but something about it struck him as funny.

The others staying in the shabby rooms were furtive, down on their luck or criminal, even in the hardscrabble town they had wound up in. A merc would have stood out to people on the run, even one good enough to spot Riddick. The guests would have bolted for somewhere safer. The merc was staying somewhere else and Riddick thought about where the merc would hole up.

The town was laid out in rough concentric circles with the port at the epicenter. People came and left by the port but didn't travel much farther. It was a stop off before bigger, better and brighter places and anyone that made a stop stayed close, hopeful about leaving. Even those that lived on-world didn't leave the few square miles that made up the town.

_'Wouldn't leave his ship.'_

A ship was a merc's livelihood. Without it, he was nothing, no better than local law. If a merc had a crew he might venture away from port in search of his target but only if he could leave his ship to someone he trusted and Riddick hadn't made anyone else, just the one.

It wasn't unheard of to see a merc without a crew; Johns had hunted him alone on more than one occasion, but it wasn't common either. So, one merc, with the possibility of another staying with the ship.

The rain outside increased, thundering on the patched roof and tinking into an odd assortment of buckets and jars on the floor. The air in the room got damp and the radiator clicked and groaned, working double time to drive back the cold air.

Flipping over onto his side, Riddick curled his knees up to his chest and burrowed under the blanket, willing himself not to shiver, trying to keep warm against the growing damp. It was easier said than done but he knew that once he started to shiver, it would be hard to stop.

He didn't complain overly about it. Freedom was good. Freedom was always good, no matter what it cost him to get it, but like so many things, there were degrees of freedom. He had never felt free planetside. It wasn't slam but he still felt stuck, trapped, even if no one knew where he was, if no one was following. What he needed was a ship. And one had just offered itself up.

_'Will you take me with you?'_

The young girl's voice made him smile but Riddick was already asleep. The only time that Jack spoke to him was in his dreams. Instead of rain, he walked beside Jack on the dry dust of T2, the heat of the three suns beating down on them and the bones of hammerheads underfoot as they wandered the ruins of the abandoned settlement. Everyone else was gone and he was alone with her, her and the sound of the hammerheads beneath the ground. Reaching out, he ran his hand over her newly shorn hair, feeling the bristles riffle against the calloused pads of his fingers.

_'This time, you come with me.'_

When Jack smiled up at him, Riddick felt lighter than he had in months. It was good.


	3. Chapter 3

**dayzejane**: Thanks so much!

**blissdementia**: It's interesting to write him weakened. Riddick was originally a female character, so you've got that inherent weakness to contend with, and then, in PB, he's restrained for a chunk of it, having to use some other part of his make up to get by. It's as though by stripping him of the stereotypical "male" traits of strength etc, that he's back to the sneaky bas*tard I always see him as being. Needing Jack is a part of that same "weakness", I think

**BatPhace**: *Beam*! Flattery is always good! That you're inspired to write is the highest praise I can get, so huge thanks!

**Dreaming Dragonfly**: Apologies for shorter chapters. This was originally supposed to be a simple one-shot but breaking it into chapters seemed the best way to tortur, I mean, satisfy, readers! Real Jack? Whistles innocently...

**Saismaat**: I'm really glad the hallucinogenic quality of that came through, that's what I was going for. "If only briefly." Yes, I was wanting him guilt ridden for leaving her in the cave, even if he went back for her. In normal situations I don't think he would feel guilty but after she came for him when he was lost and sick? Yeah, he's feeling guilty. Not a big fan of hurt/comfort either, which is why the only person responsible for his hurt is himself, and why Jack never actually shows up. Lost that "tail" and yeah, there's a Serenity feel to the frontier planet. Dirty, dusty...but no Reavers!

**TashaTaz**: thanks, Tash!

**njrd**: Yep, the pursuit doesn't stop, even if he's sick. Poor bas*tard can't catch a break! Jack is the one thing he's almost desperately clinging to. Maybe that's healthy, maybe it's not, but it's getting him through it. Scary music indeed; we've seen this merc before! Gotta love Jack! (((huge monster smooches, love!)))

_Thanks so much to everyone reading, reviewing, favoriting and enjoying! Next update will be out in the New Year, due to crazy holiday stuff. Now onto Chapter 3!_

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**Chapter 3**

It was less than an hour till sunset when Riddick woke. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he waited for the dizziness to stop; everything hurt, a combination of the illness and the medication and he was light headed. The weakness pissed him off and he waited for that to pass too. It served no purpose and didn't make him feel any better. Only made coping more difficult. After a few deep breaths, his head cleared enough for him to get up and look out the window.

The rain had just let up by the looks of it, subsiding to a weak drizzle. By sundown it would be gone but he didn't intend to wait. The radiator dried his robe,warming it a little as he slept. He threw it over his shoulders, pulling the hood up and hiding his features.

Looking out the window once more, he thought about the merc that had already spotted him at least twice while he had staggered, near oblivious, between his tiny rented room and the bar where he went to get something hot to stave off the chills. Twice was more than he could afford. Sick or not, he had to get on top of the situation and find out more about the man that hunted him.

From what he had observed so far, nothing in the town would move until well after sunset but that didn't mean that nothing _could_ move. It came down to a matter of will, as so many things had in his life. To what he was willing to do that others wouldn't. What he was willing to do was walk out into the acidic rain if it gave him an advantage, if it gave him something he needed. What he needed was more information and a better vantage point.

Corrosive rain meant never having a decent canopy to walk under, nothing lasted long, so he would stick close to the side of a building, slinking along under the eaten, patchwork metal flashing until he could duck into the safety of a doorway niche. From the dark of his shadowed features beneath the robe, he'd scan the way ahead, looking for the next place to jump. In this way, he moved from building-side to niche in a haphazard way until he had reached the open terrain of the port. There would be nowhere else to hide from this point but it no longer mattered. All that mattered was getting into position where he could see who left the port, and from where. Where they were going. If they moved alone.

There was nowhere at ground level that would suit him so, beneath the lacy tin over the sidewalk, he scanned the rooftops until he found what he wanted. A high enough vantage point that would give him the cover he needed. After a time the rain stopped and darkness fully fell. The flutter of a dark robe blotted out the stars for a second and then it was gone.

Jumping from one mushy slat of wood to another, Riddick stayed out of the puddles slowly vanishing on the roof and, from the edge, watched over the battered tarmac, waiting for any sign of movement. Muffling a deep, rattling cough against his arm, he looked from ship to ship. Larger cargo freighters squatted heavily in well worn ruts near the outskirts of the tarmac, a few military grade troop transports crouched closer to the edge, alone. Most of the ships spanned in between fell into smaller classes. Pirates and scavengers. Solo vessels. And at least one merc ship. But which one?

As he watched, a hatch opened, spilling weak artificial light out into the darkness and a solitary figure took a couple of steps off the lowering ramp, before jumping to the tarmac below and hitting the switch to raise the ramp once more. It was too far off to make out the locking mechanism but that was something that had never bothered Riddick before. What interested him was the apparent lack of an attending mechanic or any other crew. Another glance and then Riddick moved on to the merc, now halfway across the tarmac.

Nothing more than another dark shape against the dimming sky, the merc strode out across the tarmac, the hood of his robe pulled up over his face, obscuring his features. It could have been anyone but Riddick ran on instinct, tracking the shape as it hit the tattered edge of the crowd that began to form on the open market square at the end of the port's tarmac, disappearing. As people came off the ships and out of the buildings, it became impossible to follow the merc in the crowd of similarly dressed people, so Riddick turned his attention to the ship instead.

A fuel tech drove up in a squat four wheeled maintenance vehicle, examined the undercarriage of the ship and left, scribbling something on a pad. Another tech came and moved on to the next ship. Still no sight of a mechanic or another merc with the ship itself. It was strange and set his instincts on edge. There should be someone else. But there wasn't.

Silent as rusted metal would allow, Riddick slipped off the roof to the rotted boardwalk below. Another few moments lurking in the deeper shadows against the building as a group of soldiers from one of the transports walked by and then he was on the move once more. Cutting a dark line across the ground, headed not in the direction of the merc ship but for the anonymity of a large grey freighter where he blended in easily with a crowd of passengers shuffling down the rear hatch. Under this cover, he traveled most of the way across the open ground, dropping off to the side and disappearing once he came alongside the merc ship.

Frozen, he stayed hidden at the side of the ship, taking a few brief seconds to look over her configuration. As merc ships went, she was nothing special; just another blasted grey starjumper, pocked with gunfire and patched over more times than he could count. Sound enough though. Just ahead, a familiar shape stood by the raised hatch where the merc had left earlier. It was only when he could see the hatch through the shape that he realized it was Jack.

"Still with me, kid?" he whispered to no one in particular.

Jack didn't answer but she did turn and smirk up at him before turning to look out across the tarmac once more, arms crossed over her skinny girl's chest and not a care in the world.

_'Looking out for me.'_

That didn't make any sense. He knew that Jack wasn't real, that she was a figment of his fevered imagination, pulled from somewhere inside that didn't want to lay down and die. The girl could no more alert him to danger than she could exist at all.

_'Don't stop you from talking to her.'_

It didn't, and Riddick had come to uneasy terms with the appearance of the young girl; expecting her presence even if he didn't fully accept it. She wasn't real and yet there she was. In any case, Jack watched over the doorway, her goggled head sweeping over the cracked ground as Riddick tinkered with the hatch entry panel, finally cracking the system with a small and unsatisfying electronic beep.

Once inside, Riddick took a last look across the tarmac and closed the hatch behind him. There was no one waiting for him once he got in and Riddick stayed stock still for a moment, listening. All that answered was the low hum of the ship's computers. He had expected to have to subdue and possibly kill another merc or a mechanic once he broke into the ship and now that he didn't, he was ill at ease.

Johns had hunted him alone but at the end, Johns was half-crazy and Riddick wasn't looking forward to dealing with crazy.

The inside of the ship was tidy, not the usual cluttered mess of a ship crowded with mercs, but Riddick went through the motions of checking the empty cryo leads and lockers, just to be sure. It didn't make him any more at ease that there was no sign of anyone else. There was no arrogance in knowing that he was dangerous; it was simply a fact. A merc shouldn't have come out into the frontier to hunt him down alone. There was something wrong.

Ducking under a bundle of wires and cables, Riddick headed for the cockpit to look over the controls. The lock out protocol for the navigation console was too sophisticated to tackle in the limited time he was sure he had so he didn't tamper with it. It was something that he expected,. A log was one thing but core controls were always closely guarded against all the people that would have access to the ship, so he moved on to see what other systems he could get into, trying to get a feel for the man that was on the hunt for him.

The log was easier, meant to be open and accessed by anyone that already had access to the ship itself and, after scanning the tarmac through the ship's external cameras, Riddick leaned over and easily opened the system. Even then, it took time, more than he could spare. At first he looked for the obvious. Registry was the most easily accessed. He skipped past the obligatory Merc Guild listing and looked deeper, pulling up the name from the logs, deeper within the directory. Granger, David, with the number he used to claim contracts and paydays listed beside that. The name was unfamiliar which didn't mean anything in the scheme of things. Lots of men had hunted him and he didn't always have the luxury of getting to know them; most of them weren't worth the trouble.

There was a small, grainy picture next to the brief and meaningless info blurb. The colors meant nothing to Riddick. Shades of dark and dark. The stats read as brown eyes, brown hair. Height and weight were already known to Riddick, from having watched the man earlier. One thing stood out: an intensity that came through even in the tiny shot. Whoever Granger was, he was _hungry_.

Another look outside and Riddick eased into the pilot's seat, being careful not to move or touch anything else. That he had wanted to get a better look at the ship went without saying but what really pulled him was curiosity. It had been the same with Johns; while Johns had hunted him, Riddick had spent a good deal of time watching the merc, trying to figure out what made him tick. And now here was another merc, hunting him alone when he shouldn't have been. He was curious.

Moving chronologically back through the ship's archived logs, Riddick reaffirmed what he had guessed: that Granger had been on his tail since he left Decarra 12. After he had escaped Decarra, Riddick had lost track of time but it looked as though roughly half a day after his escape, word had gone out on the merc guild's wire about the contract. It was a big payday and Riddick wasn't surprised to see the large number of bids, or the amount of the payout; he was beyond being flattered when the price meant that he had to live on the run.

What had him lean closer to the console was that Granger wasn't even close to Decarra 12 when he pulled rank and took the bid.

Mercs were greedy. The creed is greed. Even a payday as big as bagging Riddick wouldn't entice a lot of mercs to come several systems out of their way – with the cost that entailed in fuel, time and payoffs to the guild for prime bids - into the wilderness, and after someone that wasn't a sure bet. Someone that was known to kill any mercs on his trail. Not only had Granger demanded to take the contract but he had dropped the rest of his crew, an eight man team, to do it.

It didn't add up. Looking at the list of jobs that Granger had taken, at the impressive list of convicts that he had brought in, it was strange to see such a sudden change in behaviour. Especially now with someone so dangerous to hunt down. A careful man didn't suddenly choose one day to be reckless and Riddick wanted to know why.

_© copyright September 2009 xxxevilgrinxxx_


	4. Chapter 4

**Saismaat:**

**like he was doing the minimizing thing.**

*that's it exactly. Guilt is not a good thing for him. It's unfamiliar, so he seeks to lessen it, because he did go back for her.

**Jack's not going to show? Man . . .**

*I know. It'd be tempting to stray from the planned storyline and have them get together but I think I like her as a ghost-girl. To see her the way he sees her, the way he needs to see her. In any case, Jack will make a show soon...just not in this story :)

**I like that Riddick wakes up oriented towards sunset.**

*It suits him. I had this set at another time of the day, with him rising at dawn instead of in the night. It didn't seem right to me

**I might have broken that up and lost one of the heads. Out of context, that is a very strange sentence I just wrote.**

*snorks* I lopped off one of those heads and yes, a very weird sentence indeed!

**Snort. Nicely petulant.**

I can see him getting pissy about being sick. I've never met a guy that wasn't and I can't see him being any different.

**I had to read that twice because the first time I thought the radiator warmed the cloak as he put it on. I might have broken it up or honed it down.**

*I went for both, broke it apart and honed it down.

**Nice. I like the invocation of the eclipse. Something in the Riddick-verse is always blocking out the light. Nice allusion.**

*that's true! And when something isn't blocking out the light, he's doing it himself, disappearing into the darkness

**I might have lost a roof. Again, I write a wacky sentence.**

*there's only enough room in this town for one roof, so the extra has to go!

**Nice. I like the allusion to "are you with me." With the pathos of "no one in particular."**

*thanks, I like that too. He's not completely delusional...even when he is

**'Don't stop you from talking to her.'" Very nice!**

*thanks. It's the hope that gets me. Thing is, it's Jack's hope that got Riddick, I think

**Nice job with the shaping! Riddick knows more now, but understanding has not followed. Hope he gets better soon. As for the "no Reaver" thing – hey, we've all got a bit of the old Caliban in us! Some of us (cough, Riddick, cough) maybe more than others!**

*Riddick needs time to reflect, only gaining understanding when things have settled enough to soak it in and absorb. He's accustomed to having no time to really understand, only to act quickly once presented with the situation and seems a prime example of making decisions without benefit of the full facts, through no fault of his own but as a matter of circumstance. Given time to rest, he'll get it. Yes, the wild man, it's in all of us and in characters like Riddick, we get the luxury of stretching ourselves to the extremes of existence. To go to the edge of the black and see what we see. As always, huge thanks!

**BatPhace:**  
**keep me hangin woman. Way to go! :o)**  
*weeee! sets out cookies for the swing

**Elizabeth Cords:**  
**Well, well, well... look who I found. :P**  
*surprise!  
**You were always good at getting in Big Evil's head. This is gonna be an interesting ride.**  
*If I can't get into his pants, I'll get into his head. It's a good place to be, either way.  
**I like it so far. Kinda concerned he didn't go for the med kit/scanner on the merc's ship... but *shrug* he doesn't want to 'disturb' stuff, does he?**  
*whistles innocently* And no, he's being very careful what he touches. One of the things that "my" Riddick tends to be driven by (when it's not pure survival) is curiosity and this merc has piqued his curiosity.  
**Little worried about Jack's ghost. Think it's gonna bite him in the butt pretty soon.**  
*It's an extension of himself, dreamed up to keep him sane, keep him company. Like doing things under hypnosis, I don't think it could do anything Riddick wouldn't do normally. Perhaps him thinking about her so much isn't healthy anyway.  
**I'm off to hunt down Granger's Run**  
*enjoy! It can be found on VX, or on my personal blog, foreverdyingbrightly ( dot) com.

**blissdementia:**

"I can actually make a visual picture in my head of each chapter."

*woohoo! thank you! I love being IN the story, being right there, so it means a lot to me if you're right in there too. Thanks!

**even though Riddick knows he is currently in a weakened state, he is still thinking.**

*I've always liked that aspect of Riddick, that no matter how weak - whether it's because he's stick with a bit in his mouth or has some bug that would drop someone else, he thinks things through. I tend to think it's one of those more female touches that really cements the notion that Riddick was supposed to be a female character.

* * *

**Chapter 4**

A shape moved on the console. Honed predatory instincts eons old kicked in and Riddick tracked the movement. A tight cluster of passengers in the finest clothes they had left one of the large freighters further down the tarmac, followed by another smaller group of ship's techs in overalls, clipboards in hand. The techs slowed and then stopped before the merc ship, conferring with each other silently on the monitor. Disturbing nothing, Riddick was on his feet, blade out and concealed against his thigh, his robe swept clear of the sweep of his arm.

From the side of the ship, his ghost-girl watched. Arms crossed over her chest, she leaned nonchalantly against the grey side of the ship, unseen to all but him, not a care in the world. Through the ship, she looked right at him, not at those that moved slowly outside the ship.

Muscles taut, Riddick leaned over the console, eyes darting between the space-struck passengers outside and the slender rags and camo clad figure of Jack. Only one image was real. Only one image mattered. Unwilling to toss aside instinct completely in favor of the apparition he had dreamed up to see him through, he stayed stock still, watching them both.

Prepared to kill anyone that threatened his position within the ship. Already two steps ahead, he thought of what he would do with the body, of how he would get out of the airfield, knowing that he didn't have what he needed to take the merc ship immediately. Of how he might get back and what the fallout of a messy kill aboard the ship would be. If he would have to abandon taking the merc ship altogether in favor of something else. He thought further ahead, to the medical attention he knew he would need and couldn't get where he was.

All the planning was unnecessary as the gawkers shuffled on, the techs behind them, still checking things off on their clipboards. Against the outside of the ship, Jack adjusted the battered goggles on her head and cracked a smirk as she looked at him.

_'Fucking smartass,'_ he thought, grinning. Even as his ghost-girl, she was Jack through and through. Fearless when it came to him.

Devoid of passersby, the monitors now delivered the same bland scene as before. Bored techs shuffled back and forth across the dark tarmac outside. Occasionally a group of passengers would leave a ship or bustle back to one. Purchases in tow, they clung to the pools of electric light, hopping from one bright spot to the next until they were safely back at whatever decrepit trawler they came in on. For the most part they ignored everything else around them, as though to notice was to be noticed.

Watching the console carefully, Riddick scanned the entire tarmac and only when he felt secure that no one was going to try to take the ship did he reclaim his seat. He knew that he should leave, that there was no way to know how long he had before the merc showed up again, but couldn't, not without finding out more about the man that hunted him.

Back he went through the logs. Routine entries. Stops for fuel and supplies. The obligatory contacts with the Merc Guild, necessary to hold onto the contract. Back further. From a solitary crew of one, the records grew to include other members and their scattered thoughts as one by one they were let go, dropped on planets and spaceports. The other mercs meant nothing to him and Riddick ignored those records. They were filler for what he really wanted: more information about Granger himself.

For a while there was next to nothing, desultory entries that did little more than sign off on a fuel shipment, as though Granger couldn't bring himself to say a word more than absolutely necessary. Then, as Riddick continued to move backwards through the logs, he found something.

_'Louise.'_

First a single name and then the scene played out in reverse, sterile and hollow, once Riddick accessed Granger's personal logs. First Granger denied it had happened, then he was sorry. Heartbroken. Destroyed at the revelation of her death by lung cancer, that he should have been there and wasn't, that she had been dying for a while and he wasn't there because he was out somewhere hunting convicts. That if he'd chosen to live somewhere else, closer to the Guild, she could have gotten care in time. Reading only of love last.

Never having had a great love in his life, Riddick didn't understand the depth of the emotion, the pain of the loss. He could see it, he knew that he could use it, but he didn't understand it. What he did have was a ghost-girl that he clung on to with the force of life itself, summoned out of the depth of need. Maybe he understood after all.

In any case, he continued to read Granger's logs, scanning ever backward until Louise was evident but not ever present. While Granger had been far from home, his wife had died of cancer. Riddick skimmed over the details but he put together that Granger hadn't been there and shortly after that, he had ditched his crew and taken a contract on one of the most dangerous convicts in the known universe.

It was crazy but it wasn't new to Riddick. There had been times in Slam when he had seen convicts give up, just lose everything that made them want to live. Instead of killing themselves outright, they'd go toe to toe with something or someone they had no chance of defeating. They'd get shiv'ed or shot up by the guards, swim out past their depth and drown. Jump fence when there was no chance that they could make it. Whatever it took, it didn't matter, as long as they ended up dead. He'd never been that bad off but he knew how they got there, he'd watched it happen plenty of times. Like now, it was from the sidelines, where he examined it coldly.

Crazy would have been easier. No matter how crazy Johns got at the end, he had wanted to live and Riddick could always use that against him. Dealing with someone that not only wasn't afraid to die but wanted to die was a different thing entirely. In that scenario, Riddick wasn't a threat anymore. Riddick offered death. If the merc no longer feared death there weren't a whole lot of threats left.

Moving quickly made his head spin, made everything hurt, and so he dropped to his knees slowly, eyes closed, waiting for the ship to stop moving. Making one last check beneath the neat console, looking for any other surveillance devices. He didn't expect any; while mercs had no problem stripping a convict of any dignity he had left, they were particular about their own. He checked because it was a habit to check. Nothing.

As carefully as he had entered the ship's logs, Riddick got out of the system, covering his tracks as he went. Backtracking completely, he stood and took a last look around the cockpit to ensure that everything was exactly as it had been when he had entered and then made his way to the rear of the ship.

Bolted at the side of the hatchway opening for quick access, the battered med kit was Riddick's next stop. Equipped with supplied for gun shot wounds, knife wounds and lacerations. The med kit on any merc ship had more than adequate supplies to handle these types of wounds. Anything more could be handled by cryo freeze and a jump to the nearest station or starship. Or the merc would make his last trip out of the airlock. Riddick pawed carefully through bags of sterile bandages and instant suture tapes, noting the bottle of pain medication on the way.

At the bottom of the kit was a rudimentary hand held medical scanner. Lacking nanotechnology, it was no match for the larger machines used on military freighters, or in slam for that matter, but it could assess a medical situation and at least tell him what he had. It would have to do. Uncapping one end of the scanner, Riddick pressed the needle tip against the skin and watched as the tiny bulb at the end filled with blood. The needle retracted and, on instinct, he sucked the pad of his thumb, pressing his tongue against it until it stopped bleeding.

_'Massive viral infection of undetermined origin.'_

_'No shit.'_

The small screen quickly filled with possible viruses and their associated symptoms, unable to definitively name a single source. Given the amount of time Riddick had spent crawling through the filth and waste of Decarra 12's sewer, to say nothing of the swamp beyond the walls, it wasn't an unexpected diagnosis. There was no way to know how many bugs he had picked up.

There was an odd feeling of pride at carrying around so many viruses that would likely kill another man, and living to tell about it. Being in slam, living hard, on the run, had exposed him to so many dangerous organisms that he supposed he had picked up enough immunity that whatever he had didn't kill him outright. It gave him hope that he could fight off the infection eventually, although it did nothing for how miserable it made him at the moment. And it made the antibiotics that he had pilfered earlier all but useless.

There were no bottles of pills amongst the bandages in any case and, from his reconnaissance of the town, what few drugs existed were so valuable that it was too much of a risk to steal them if he didn't absolutely have to. In any case he needed to stay clear, sharp. Once he started taking more drugs, there was no telling what effect they would have on him, or how they would interact with what he had already taken. He wasn't willing to take that risk, at least not yet.

Along with the expected diagnosis of a viral infection, the scanner offered the completely useless prescription of a massive dosage of antivirals, which the kit didn't have. Or a scheduled session with a military grade nanomedical scanner, which the ship didn't have.

_'Not gonna happen.'_

Riddick cut off the scanner before it could helpfully send on his information to any nearby military medical stations and then pocketed the scanner as well. It had his blood, his DNA, stored within and, until he could be absolutely sure that he could return to the merc ship, he would have to hold onto it. Given its place at the very bottom of the med kit, he didn't think it would be missed. It was time to go.

Standing in the deeper shadows at the side of the hatch, Riddick hit the switch and waited for the ramp to descend. Before the walkway was even halfway down, he had already scanned the area in front of the ship to see if he faced a threat from that direction. The pools of light that illuminated the space outside the big freighters only made the surrounding darkness all the deeper and Riddick used it to his advantage, slipping out of the hatchway and down onto the tarmac below. The hatch raised silently, clicking shut. From the skin of the ship, Riddick raised his goggles and peered out into the black, watching for any sign that he had been spotted leaving. Jack was nowhere to be seen.

_'...possible hallucinations...'_

As certain as Riddick was that Jack wasn't real, he was certain that she was there, that she was his figment, not something cooked up by a virus. Still, he looked for her, doubt gnawing at him that once he had read that he was prone to hallucinations, that Jack would disappear. She was gone and something tugged inside him.

Feeling hollow, he forced himself forward. Across the tarmac and into the throng that had gathered at the edge of the airfield. The market was loud with sellers shouting out prices and passengers from the ships haggling to either side. The knot of passengers in the middle of the street moved slowly but offered the densest cover and he wove his way through. Men pulled carts laden with bolts of cloth, crates of MRE's, weapons and even livestock through the middle passage and he stood aside to let them pass.

From beneath the edge of his hood, he scanned the crowd for a sign of Granger. Twice, at least, the merc had spotted him. Once outside the bar. The other in the crowded marketplace. Riddick planned on making his way slowly through one and towards the other, trolling for the merc. He itched to make for the rooftops, where he could see. Kept to the ground. What hid the merc from him also hid him from the merc. Unlike the trip out to the ship, in the rain, on the roof now, he would be exposed.

The crowd grew thick, the voices both louder and indistinguishable. Cold wracked through him and he shuddered. Disoriented in the jostling crowd. Feeling like a coward, he fought the urge to drop to his knees and crawl to the side of the throng. He wouldn't do it, he refused to succumb. It didn't change how he felt. The night air closed around him, no longer an ally. Refusing to drop, refusing to shove, he took another step and then another. An all too brief clearing up ahead as two merchants held the pedestrians at bay. A heavy cart stopped all traffic as it trundled out into the middle of the street.

As he stood still, waiting with the others, Riddick breathed as deeply as his congested lungs would allow. The near-panic from the crowd dissipating even as those around him swore at the merchants to hurry up and clear the street. When the laden cart moved past, Riddick bled into the mob once more, heading for the bar

Riddick knew that he could go back to the ship and just wait but he didn't like the odds. Too many things could go wrong. The merc could yell out, or fire his weapon, either of which could bring the port guards running, to say nothing of any military ships in the area. There would be a body to get rid of, something that was easier said than done. Just as Riddick now trolled for the merc, hoping to pull him out into the open, Riddick knew that Granger would do the same. Had done the same, or Riddick might not have seen him at all. The merc _wanted_ to be found.

The merchant stalls thinned as the light from the sharply delineated pots of light from the spaceport faded into darkness. As sure as an electric fence, tourists stepped towards the dividing line between belonging and visiting. Stopped, peered beyond, and backed away. Leaving Riddick alone as he walked into the shadows along near-deserted storefronts. He reached out for the telltale itch from behind, the warning that he was being followed, and felt nothing.

If Granger was here, he was ahead. But where? Up onto the boardwalk and beneath the eaves of the building, Riddick waited beside a metal rain barrel. With a sigh, he looked back along the street from where he had come, not wanting to go back through the crowded market if it could be avoided. To his right, at the end of the block of buildings, the bar stood on its own, the only lit windows other than the market. In the expanse between, the street was all but deserted. He melted into the black as a group of drunken men staggered out of the bar, pushing and shouting at each other.

From the darkness, he scanned the street again, looking for a sign of movement, of anything that was off. Across the street, a shape flickered and Riddick was on the move before he fully registered what it was. Not the merc. Jack. Just seeing her again made his chest feel funny. Not just a hallucination. The girl didn't turn to look at him, just sauntered down the middle of the boardwalk, kicking an imaginary stone out of her way as she did. Riddick followed her without fail, disappearing around the corner of a building.

_'Granger.'_

_© copyright September 2009 xxxevilgrinxxx_


	5. Chapter 5

_Feedback for both Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 are at the bottom of the chapter!_

_

* * *

  
_

**Chapter 5**

The alley between the two buildings was little more than eight feet across at its narrowest point, pocked with broken bottles and litter sodden from the earlier rains. Puddles slowly soaked into the hard ground, leaving the pathway slick and the going treacherous but Granger was in sight and Riddick wasn't in a hurry. It was dark. A little light washed down over the slanted roof above. For Riddick, the dim illumination glowed purple-white along the edges of the buildings, diffusing out to shades of dark purple in the deepest shadows. He knew that Granger saw much less, just enough light to sharpen the shadows. Depending on how long he had waited in the alley, his eyes may have become acclimated to the dark but the merc would never see clearly.

Occasional shouts rang out, sounding strange in the twisted passages between the buildings, echoing, making it hard to tell exactly from where they came. Crouched in the dark beside the rain barrel, Riddick watched as Granger scanned the alley at every noise. Noticed that the merc never once went for his weapon. A dangerous frontier town was a bad place to be twitchy but to never once reach for a weapon was a sign. Of naivete, cold blood, or something else. After reading through Granger's logs, Riddick settled on the merc being simply beyond caring, the most dangerous position of all.

_'Knows I'm here.'_

That was a certainty, Riddick knew, or the man would have moved on, continued to search for his target. That the merc didn't know exactly where Riddick was, couldn't see him, didn't mean that he didn't feel the target. Good at what he did. Riddick hated mercs straight through to the bone but he could admire the skill nonetheless. Admired another hunter's talent.

Watching Granger, Riddick shuffled the toe of his boot against the ground and made a quieter, subtler sort of sound. Watched as Granger stepped out briefly into the alleyway, his head moving from side to side as he tried to make up for his lack of sight. In time, and given the opportunity, Riddick knew that Granger could walk out into the dark and find what he looked for. Riddick didn't intend to wait that long.

To Riddick's eye, Granger stood exposed, clear as day against the side of a building. It was curious. For all of the man's skill, Riddick expected the man to hide himself better.

_'Not the name of the game; he wants to be found. Gotta stop looking at this fuck like he's Johns.'_

Johns was crazy but he wasn't stupid with his life. Johns would have hidden better. Would have baited the alleyway, Riddick thought darkly, remembering the crying injured girl, right before the butt of a rifle knocked him cold. There was no bait, no team, only a lone merc with a death wish. Still, Riddick took a deeper look around the alleyway to satisfy instinct. They were alone, even Jack was gone.

Silent, Riddick slid along the wall, never taking his eyes off the other man. It was a strange position he was in. Unsure, uneasy. If there was another way or if there was time to gain access to the lockouts he would need to access the ship's navigation and bypass the port authorities, he would do so, just slip past and leave Granger where he stood. But he needed that access. And truth be told he needed to satisfy his own curiosity.

The grit of the alleyway made way for the rotted wooden slats of a makeshift boardwalk along the side of the building and Riddick knew that being quiet would be impossible. He could avoid the wooden walkway and step out into the middle of the lane and risk being seen by Granger in the weak light that came over the top of the roof. Or his boot falls would squelch and creak along the boardwalk, echoing hollowly, betraying him with every step he took.

The choice of being quiet was taken from him as his chest hitched and he tried to muffle the hacking cough by biting his arm. It didn't matter. The sound may as well have been gunshots in the confined space and, ignoring the sound of his boots, he ran to the end of the wooden slats. Coughing rattled down to a wet wheeze as Riddick stepped back against the building once more but hiding was out of the question. Eyes watering, he crouched, tense, ready to bolt if Granger went for his gauge.

Across the alley Granger tracked him easily, even in the near dark, stepping out into the middle. Drawn, haggard, the merc's features were chiseled by the pain that was evident in his eyes. The coughing died out and Riddick continued to slide alongside the building, stopping at the corner, assessing. The cough had temporarily abated but the cold chills that came with it settled into his bones like a damp cloak.

There had been no date on the merc's picture, just a dry list of stats, so there was no way to know when it had been taken but Riddick figured that it had been well before his wife had died. Now he looked thinner, paler, his hair more grey. And he looked as though he hadn't had a good night's sleep in months. Haunted. The merc looked haunted, and Riddick felt another sort of chill race down his spine, thinking of his own ghost-girl. No pity, just the sharp awareness of a weakness spotted, something to be exploited.

Straightening to his full height, Riddick flicked one edge of his cloak over his shoulder and stepped away from the building, letting the light from the marketplace filter down over him. Noted that Granger didn't go for the gauge on his hip, not once.

"Been looking for me," Riddick opened simply. It was obvious but he wanted to get Granger to say something, anything. Put a voice to the image that he had. They were both armed. They both knew they were armed. Riddick knew that he could just as easily fight for what he wanted. Even on a bad day, he was sure he could kill for it, but that was never as interesting and in his weakened condition, he didn't want to risk it. Faced with a certain death, the merc could always change his mind at the last moment.

"You know how this goes, Riddick. You're going back to finish your piece on Decarra."

The accent was hard to place, as though Granger had spent so long in so many places that he had taken on a piece of all of them. The fatigue, the strain, showed in every syllable. If Riddick was beaten, he wasn't alone.

"And how do you think that's going to happen?" Riddick's voice softened slightly, becoming insinuating, as he stepped sideways, even further out into the open space of the alley. "You gonna bring me back? Alone?"

Granger took a step forward until there were scant feet between the two men, the lines of his face deepening as he moved further into the light. "You're going back, with a bit in your mouth if need be. I don't need anyone else."

Anger flashed through him at mention of the bit. Riddick eyed Granger carefully as the man dropped his hand to the butt of his gauge, dropped it and nothing more. The catch remained over the grip, making the weapon useless until the merc snapped it over. Twice as much alive. A merc might take a shot at him but kill him? Not when the half he would bring in dead was more than most mercs made in a year. With the chance to double that just for bringing him in alive? No merc in the universe would shoot a payday like the one he promised but the threat was just that, a threat.

_'Fucker's looking to push me.'_

A smirk pulled at the corner of Riddick's mouth as he eyed Granger. "Don't need anybody else? You sure about that? Been on your ship, merc, and I think that's not exactly the truth." His knife hand itched but Riddick ignored it. There was more than one way to cut a man.

The anger was a visceral change that briefly contorted Granger's face. The eyes darkened and lips bled white and he watched the merc's gun hand as Granger splayed out his fingers over the butt. It would have been so easy for him to go for it. A shot in the leg wasn't a kill. Still a full payday, with a little medical care. Riddick ticked off the seconds, knowing that he could fall back into the open space alongside the building before the merc could unsnap his weapon but there was no need. Telegraphing the movement, Granger's hand knotted into a fist and he stepped forward, the weapon all but forgotten at his side.

A short vicious swing and Riddick was grabbing the merc's elbow, closing his eyes against the vertigo and letting momentum take them both down. Mud splashed up as Riddick's full weight landed on Granger's back. Eyes closed, Riddick toed the ground, seeking purchase, anything to try to stop the ground from spinning. If the merc managed to get Riddick on his back, he knew it would be over. Beneath him, Granger spluttered and let out a strangled shout, struggling to roll over onto his back.

The noise from the marketplace beyond stretched out and bled together strangely and Riddick squeezed his eyes shut. Moving so quickly, falling so hard, made him disoriented and the one certain thing was the fighting man beneath him. Fumbling once, Riddick reached down and unsnapped the merc's guage, sending the gun sailing out into the alley where it tinked impotently on the gravel.

Pulling the merc over, Riddick slammed him hard onto his back and pulled his blade free in a fluid motion, holding it to Granger's neck. Something like victory flitted across the merc's expression as he raised his chin imperceptibly.

"Just do it," Granger ground out angrily, daring Riddick to kill him.

The merc had left her to die alone. If he had wanted, he could have taken contracts closer to home. He could have done something else. He could have lived on the money Riddick knew he had cleared from other jobs. But he hadn't done any of those things. It would be so easy to kill him. Too easy. Nobody got off that easy.

"If you really loved your wife, you wouldn't have let her die like that. You wouldn't have left her alone. Was it worth it, merc?"

Like a double edged blade, what he had said cut deep and he thought of the young girl that he had pushed into a cave, ready to abandon her if it meant he'd save his own skin. He wasn't sure what hurt more, that he had done it or the look on her face when he came back. After all of that, he had left her again, on New Mecca. As he held the blade against Granger's throat, all he could think of was the way that her chin had dimpled as she watched him leave, standing in the dark outside the Holy Man's house. She wasn't supposed to be awake but she was. He left her alone. Twice.

Voice straining under the threat of the blade, Granger tipped his chin up a scant half an inch and swallowed, his hands fisting the gravel, flung out wide to either side. "I read about you too, Riddick. About the girl..."

A tiny bead of blood welled on the edge of the blade. Riddick watched and brought back the knife. The blood didn't surprise him but the loss of control did. Little more than a scratch but it wasn't what he had intended and he was pissed off that the merc had gotten his own cuts in.

"Don't know what you heard, merc," Riddick said in a near whisper, mere inches from Granger's face. For a few days there had been rumors when they touched down at New Mecca. Rumors that first multiplied, as Riddick fed them with a sighting here and a whisper there. Rumors that were dismissed out of hand as they grew in scope. One thing he had learned from mercs was that there was a limit to what people would believe, what they would be willing to accept. After a while, interest moved on to the next big thing and he was forgotten. Forgotten by most, but apparently Granger had been paying attention.

"What you heard doesn't matter."

Wanting to twist the knife a little more, Riddick leaned in further even as he pulled the blade back, letting the edge rest against the coarse fabric of Granger's vest. "What does matter is that I'm going back for her. That to me she means enough to go back. Can you say the same?"

The taunt was as physical as a slap, more cutting than a slashed throat, and Granger recoiled. Recoiled and then pushed up against Riddick, his hands leaving the gravel alleyway and scrabbling at Riddick's wrists. Riddick coughed as a fist struck him in the chest and pulled back slightly, taking the blade off Granger altogether. Rather than fight to break free at Riddick's misfortune, the merc struggled even harder. The desperation was so thick that Riddick could smell it. Familiar and painful, he remembered retching miserably into the sewers of Decarra, and how he clung to the image of the one thing in his life that mattered, that made him matter.

_'I should just kill him, leave this fuck in the dust. This is going to come back and bite me in the ass.'_

Straddling the merc's waist, Riddick batted away another wild swing from the man beneath him and dropped his blade back into its sheath. Rather than put Granger at ease, it only made him fight all the harder but even as ill as he was, he still outweighed the other man by thirty pounds and Granger couldn't shake him off. Keeping Granger pinned, Riddick turned out the man's cargo pockets roughly, dumping the contents onto the gravel. First the pants, then the vest, only finding the dogeared notebook last, in an inside pocket, zippered neatly. As Granger fought harder, Riddick knew that what he had found was important. A long list of alphanumeric code scribbled in a neat hand on the first two ages. The lock out code. Riddick was curious about the rest of the notebook but they had spent enough time in the alley and he had places to go.

"You can't leave me here like this."

Granger had stopped lashing out at Riddick and lay back in the gravel, eyes closed, panting slightly, and for a brief moment, Riddick felt something like pity. It wouldn't last and he would never voice it but it was there. At least he had Jack.

"You're just going to have to live with it." Raising to one knee, Riddick pulled up Granger, shaking him loosely. They both staggered as Riddick got to his feet, dragging the merc with him and then the cold wall of the building held them both up as Riddick moved back into the comfort of darkness. "The next time we meet, I'll kill you."

It was a cold promise and Granger dropped his head, defeated. Only when the merc slid down the wall, settling heavily into the gravel and filth at the side of the building did he slowly back away. Into the dim light of the alleyway and disappearing alongside the side of a building.

There were no sounds of pursuit but Riddick cut back on his path several times, even circling back once, to see the merc still slumped against the building, his head in his hands this time. In silence, Riddick watched for a few minutes more, debating whether he should go back and finish Granger off. He should, the merc was a loose end, but the Riddick that would have killed Granger without a second thought was dead. Left behind on T2. It still wasn't pity that he felt; he didn't know what it was. Whatever it was, Riddick crept back to the main market, clinging to the walls as he moved toward the port.

As before, no one stopped him as he slipped into the ship and, with the codes he had taken from Granger, he easily accessed the navigation system. A chill wracked through him as he eased into the harness, making adjustments and dimming the lights that came up on the console, greeting him as the ship's nav console came up on the HUD in front.

There were things that he needed. Medical care. Stop somewhere and strip the merc ship down so that it couldn't be traced. Fuel. As he cleared his exit with port security, he ran the route through his head, tapping keys on the console to plot out a course, leaving his final destination until last.

_'New Mecca.'_

END

_© copyright September 2009 xxxevilgrinxxx_

**Chapter 4:**

**Blissdementia:** Yes, exactly! He's a guy, just like everybody else. Sure, he's killed a few people and all the rest, but he's just like everybody else.

**Tiberius:** The next, and last! chapter follows! The hallucinations and sickness is like handicapping him, if only briefly, and forces him to do things a little differently. It's much like having to cope with being restrained, and getting what he needs even then. Thanks, muchly! I can't see him getting great medical care in prison. Sure, in the video games, where health is such an instant thing necessary for the game, I can see it being overlooked but I imagine the conditions in a lot of places he's been would be appalling, even given current standards.

**Saismaat:** It's a struggle for me because I want to thank people instantly for giving me feedy, but I like it also to be public, as your feedy is public, so..struggle.

"That took me a second – I thought maybe it was a shadow on the console that shifted rather than something he saw through a view screen."  
I batted that around as well, and also had it "shadow" for a while but I didn't want it to seem like it was on the ship. I was looking more at those primal instincts where we see a shape moving and start tracking it without thought.

"What a set of choices. Instinct or madness."  
I think Riddick tends to fly somewhere between the two, especially now, when he's not at the top of his game.

"Weirdly sweet that his version of her has no fear of him at all."  
That's it, it's his version, and what he needs to believe in her. It's telling that he needs to believe that she feels that way about him.

"Thanatos! The death urge. Makes sense Riddick would embody that for someone out there."  
yep, he's embodied the death urge, and is also dealing with his own in a weird way, with Jack

"The last phrase, "a human oddity that meant nothing to him" seemed a little forced if it's from his POV – if it means nothing to him why would he pause to mark that?"  
It was a late addition and yep, it's forced, so...wooosh, it's gone!

"Maybe "Designed for" or "It was ready for" to introduce? I know what you mean, but I stumbled on it. "  
Tinkered slightly. I'm at war with my love for short, brutal sentences.

""Not a hallucination"? a white rabbit?"  
Tinkered. Added a 'just' in there. There was amoment when the med-scanner was running through the information when it said he would have hallucinations. He needed to tell himself that Jack isn't just a hallucination to him but something more. Or at least a real special hallucination.

"Nice job giving back story on the other guy without breaking POV."  
Hard, very hard. I've written Granger in first person before and it's difficult not going there. He's a first person sort of guy

Thanks so much for insights and feedy, as always!

**NJRD:** Riddick's innate curiosity always seems to feature somewhere in my makeup of the man. And in walks this weird puzzle, Granger. Sure, Riddick's got better things to do, but then there's this puzzle, just waiting there. Acid rain...shudder. I love that you end up right there with me, it lets me know I'm doing this right, when people can BE there.

Made you fall for Granger, a merc no less, mwahahahha! I love the characters like Riddick and Jack but I have a soft spot for the OMC/OFC's, especially the OMC's. Getting inside Riddick's head is fun, but there's always canon limiting how far you can go with it. OMC? I can go wherever I want!

Both these guys, a mess, one staggering around half-dead and the other wanting to be dead. It's one of those stories that I've wanted to do for a while, because their last meeting was, well, so final. I wanted to get at why.

Exactly! If not for Jack, I wonder if Riddick would really care about some of the things that he cares about here? Would he get it?

yep, the end is close, love :)

(((hugs monster smooches right back)))

**Chapter 5:**

**Bliss: **

_"It's always that damn cough that roars it's ugly head when you are trying to be as quiet as possible."_

That's what you get for trying to sneak around! It happens to me every time. You know that if he just walked normally down that alley, nothing would have happened :D

**Saismaat:**

_Good scene setting! These dark places, lurking in between, defined by what they're not. Alleys are great. I did stumble a little on the word order on the last clause. Maybe "litter sodden from the earlier rains"?_

I love alleys as well, it must be a Vancouver thing :)I changed the order of words and yep, it works well that way.

_Nice. I might broken that into two sentences, but that may just be idiosyncratic on my part. Good job literalizing the metaphor. The path is slick and treacherous. . . _

It's funny but that originally was two sentences and it didn't roll off the tongue for me as well. Maybe if I put it down for a bit...

_"his eyes may have become acclimated to the dark but the merc would never see clearly.  
Snerk. lotta judgment implied there!_

yes, it really can be seen that way as well! Neat!

_I might have stuck with alley._

It's funny but so many of the words for alley don't have the same visual impact. I think you're right, only alley seems to fit.

_. . . made a quieter? My husband used to volunteer at the zoo. He used to do that sometimes to get an animal's attention. It was pretty cool. _

yeah, it's not the right word, but it's the right feel. (And I just realized that I had "Smade", ugh) That always drives me nuts :D Predators track sound and movement, and its the little sounds, the furtive ones, that get us.

_I forgot about his little projected personality disorder. _

Riddick is a glorious mess, isn't he?

_Heh. Nice. Is Riddick aware of the inconsistency between "If there was another way or if there was time to gain access . . .just slip past and leave Granger where he stood." And "And he needed to satisfy his own curiosity."? Maybe "And, truth be told. . .?" _

I think Riddick would be aware of the conflicting impulses, to the point of being able to list them off in his head as possible strategic options. I've always seen him as being innately curious, even when it comes to his own behaviour. That "interesting" thing. I think he spends a lot of time watching how people react and when he doesn't have other people to watch, he's introspective. It doesn't mean that he would necessarily talk about those things out loud, but I can see him doing it, if for nothing other than entertainment value. The truth be told works quite well with that sentence. I really wanted him aware of how contradictory his behaviour was, and wanted a reason for it as well. Curiosity is as good a reason as any other.

_I like the identification between them. I did stumble over "It didn't inspire pity." Why's he bringing that up?_

I changed the 'inspire' rather than remove pity entirely. For me at least, someone being able to inspire pity seems more awkward than him feeling a flash of something.

_I liked "tinked impotently." Gauge? _

me too. Tinked is a good non-word. Gauge however, is not a good non-word, but it's already something out of his mouth, from Pitch Black, so I'm sort of stuck with it.

_That's an interesting inconsistency. Victory and anger._

Yes, it is. Triumph, because he's getting what he wanted, but Granger has to battle the same conflicting impulses as the rest of us.

_Our Riddick's turning into quite the moralist!_

It's funny, but I've always thought he was, at least of his own idea of morality, which is quite different from others, I suppose. He's got his own code of honor and conduct, and Granger crossed it (plus, Riddick knows that mentioning it will hurt more than a cut). Riddick had done the same thing, leaving Jack, but he intends to go back for her, which changes things, in his mind anyway.

_"If nothing that we do matters, all that matters is what we do."_

it's a matter of perception and to whom you think it matters. What you do might not matter to another single person but if it matters to you, then it's important and if it's important, then it matters :D

_Nice.  
Man! He tells this guy where he's going? Nicely fraught. Chilling ending.  
Nicely constructed story!_

Thank you! I couldn't have him just kill Granger, as Granger does show up in another story I've written, and Riddick kills him then, but it's an act of kindness, in a way.

Thanks so much for reading and enjoying!


End file.
